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Interview with Mark Swedlund
In his home at 10715-34th Ave., Plymouth, Minn.
Interviewed by Jeff Norman
Date of Interview: June 26, 2012
Mark Swedlund: MS
Jeff Norman: JN
JN: This is Jeff Norman talking with Mark Swedlund in his home in Plymouth, Minnesota, on June 26th, 2012. Mark, first of all, a little background information. What year were you born?
MS: 1950.
JN: And where?
MS: St. Louis Park.
JN: What was the address of your family home in the Park.
MS: Boy oh boy. Seventy-something Division Street.
JN: What part of St. Louis Park was that?
MS: Texas Avenue and Highway 7, right across from Knollwood Plaza. I lived there from 1950 to ’54. Then I moved back there—five houses down the street in about 1979.
JN: Where did the family move in 1954?
MS: 1954 we moved out to Excelsior on Christmas Lake.
JN: Why did the family move, do you know?
MS: Too many people for a little house. The company was not old, but they were doing real well and moving up, I guess, and then started building houses—went from St. Louis Park out to Minnetonka, too. So it was a natural move for our home, too.
JN: Did you attend college?
MS: Yep.
JN: Where?MS: St. Cloud State.
JN: And what did you study?
MS: I got a general business degree.
JN: What did you do after you graduated?
MS: Went to work for Dad.
JN: And that was what year?
MS: 1973.
JN: Did you marry?
MS: Yes.
JN: When?
MS: 1975.
JN: And your wife’s name?
MS: Valerie.
JN: Any children?
MS: Four.
JN: Their ages?
MS: Thirty-three, twenty-nine, twenty-three, and twenty-one.
JN: Have you ever lived outside of the area?
MS: No.
JN: Turning to the history of Ecklund and Swedlund, what’s the earliest history of the company? How did it form; how did you father become involved?
MS: Like we talked about, after he got out of the service in 1944, he came home and—my mother’s brother-in-law was a builder, building homes in St. Louis Park as Bruce Construction. My dad went to work for him.
JN: What was his name?
MS: Wally Bruce.JN: And you father did what in the beginning?
MS: I’m not really sure what—the laboring construction, supervision kind of thing. I think it was only for about a year, and my father got together with one of his best friends from high school, Stan Ecklund, and they started Ecklund & Swedlund Construction. They made some kind of arrangements with somebody to buy a few lots, I know on Division Street where we lived, but also over on Colorado Avenue. I think that’s where the first houses were. We lived over there before I was born, on Colorado.
JN: And what?
MS: That’s on the east side of 100 and north of Minnetonka Boulevard. Bunny’s restaurant is over there. So it’s north behind Bunny’s, east of Methodist Hospital. But anyway, I think lots were like $500 back then or even less to buy a lot in St. Louis Park, so they started building houses. Within a couple years they were building a lot of houses.
JN: Going back to Wally Bruce, what were some houses that he built or some areas in which he built?
MS: I think you’ll find a lot of his homes around the Minneapolis Country Club, whatever those developments’ names are—I’m not sure. That’s where the Westwood Nature Center is, too. Minneapolis Country Club is—southeast corner of 394 and 169.
JN: As far as you know Wally Bruce was building prior to, up to, and beyond 1944?
MS: Yes, oh yeah. The Bruce family was building all through the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Then Wally’s two sons took over. Wally retired. They were building up until maybe even the ‘90s. Steve Bruce—I think he still lives in Edina. They also lived on Christmas Lake, across the lake from us, for twenty some years.
JN: Did your father and Wally Bruce remain friends even though they became competitors?
MS: That’s a good question. As far as I know, but we didn’t do a lot of family things together. I guess maybe because we live so close across the lake from each other. You could almost wave across the lake.
JN: The new company forms, starting to buy properties, and then how did that evolve?
MS: Buying lots from whoever was developing lots in St. Louis Park. [Refers to a map] I tried to highlight areas where they built, as best I know. Up and down Cedar Avenue, there’s quite a few homes that they built there.
JN: Cedar Lake Road?MS: Cedar Lake Road, I mean, yes. And they developed some of those lots themselves, because I know one of the streets is called Stanlen Road. Stan Ecklund and Len Swedlund.
JN: What’s the difference between a developer and a builder?
MS: Developer just buys land, puts in the streets, sewer, and water and then sells the lots maybe to a builder. In Ecklund & Swedlund, my dad’s case, he developed the lots—developer—and he was also the builder. So they went all the way through building houses, too. And I think in the St. Louis Park Historical Society’s website, the first biggest development that they did was the Kilmer Addition, which is also called Cedar Knoll. And that’s on the website. They annexed that—this is probably, now what year? ’56 or something like that—’54. They annexed that property from the city—from the township of Minnetonka, because Minnetonka didn’t have sewer and water.
JN: So they convinced the city of St. Louis Park to annex that.
MS: I think that’s what it says on the website too. So they annexed it in and got sewer and water and whatever. I think there’s a couple hundred houses in there that they built. Developed the lots and built them. It wasn’t long after that they probably ran out of lots in St. Louis Park, for the most part; so they moved west to Minnetonka, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie.
JN: So these earlier areas that you’ve highlighted on this map, like, for instance, the first one you mentioned, the earlier one, off of Excelsior Boulevard . . .
MS: Yeah, the lower right corner there.
JN: There’s another area that’s near Knollwood—just north of Knollwood. When would that have been developed?
MS: That was, let’s see here. Being that I was young at the time—actually, my sister moved there in 1959, so they were building houses in that area in 1959 yet.
JN: And the area on both the north and south side of Cedar Lake Road—when would that have been developed?
MS: Same time period, I think.
JN: It sounds like the company really grew in the 1950s?
MS: Yes, it grew really fast. They were really go-getters, I guess would be the term. A lot of veterans coming back, and so forth.
JN: Do you know how many homes they built?MS: I was trying to guess. In St. Louis Park I would guess between four and six hundred. I’d have to sit down with plat maps to get it closer.
JN: You mention vets coming back. What’s you sense of the housing need in the late ‘40s and ‘50s when your father joined the partnership and they’re building homes?
MS: It was a housing boom. All the veterans coming back, getting married, having kids. Beginning of the baby boomers, I guess, generation. I think the VA financing—the government—became a program. Zero down or whatever it is; minimum down payment. All the vets were buying houses. Build them as fast as you can, and they would sell as fast as they can.
JN: Do you have any sense of where these young vets with families—young families probably, often—were coming from?
MS: I never knew. No. I was too young. I didn’t care at the time, because I was too young. Where specifically to St. Louis Park, no; I never had any knowledge of why people were moving into St. Louis Park or where they were coming from.
JN: Did the company ever develop other kinds of housing, like apartment buildings?
MS: It was always single-family homes. That’s all they wanted to do; they didn’t want to do apartments or commercial.
JN: Do you know why?
MS: No. They’re totally different businesses. But I think he was so busy building houses. They were doing a hundred and some houses a year. A lot of them custom houses, so that’s a full time job. Both him and Stan were very hands-on. It was eighteen-hour days, I’m pretty sure. Long days just building houses.
JN: You mentioned that what developers do is put in infrastructure. But then there is surrounding infrastructure, like highways and schools. Do you have any sense of what the relationship was between—I know this is before your time, but maybe there were stories told—where they chose to build, the attractiveness of those areas in relation to other, bigger supporting infrastructure.
MS: Yes, and that probably hasn’t changed over the years. Close to schools; having city utilities—sewer and water—available; and being able to subdivide city lots and have services available to own them; parks close by; and close to the big city too. St. Louis Park had all of those. The new suburbs after that became Minnetonka, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie.
JN: And when did they develop?MS: Starting in the ‘50s.
JN: So around the same time, then.
MS: Yes. St. Louis Park probably in the ‘40s and ‘50s; then Minnetonka in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and so forth. Now Minnetonka is built up; Plymouth is built up. Now they’re going further west again. Access to schools is always a big thing.
JN: What about as families—many families in society—become more affluent, how do homes themselves change as they’ve gone further out? Are they larger, for instance?
MS: Everything just kept on getting bigger and bigger. Lots got bigger. St. Louis Park—what are they, 50-foot-wide lots? Small lots. Next move was out to Minnetonka, and the lots became 90, 110 feet wide and a third to three-quarter-acre lots, with sewer and water available. Now it’s going in the other direction, because land is so short and costly, lots are becoming smaller again.
JN: Where?
MS: In the areas that are being developed now. The new suburbs—Minnetonka and farther west. Even out in the country you’ll find that they are trying to do the old traditional neighborhoods. Watertown has a development. Small lots, alleys. Trying to do the old-style, in-town residential developments. It all depends on the price of land, I guess, in the end.
JN: Has that also pushed more development toward condos or apartment complexes?
MS: Costs have I’m sure, yes. Townhouses especially. Cost is a big factor.
JN: Has there been, to you knowledge, infill development in St. Louis Park? Or maybe tear down and rebuild?
MS: I know of a little bit; I’ve never researched it, but every city—inner ring suburbs—are seeing a lot of that. Every once in awhile you’ll find a house that’s got a couple of acres in St. Louis Park or Golden Valley or something, so a builder will buy it and maybe there will be four houses going up later on. That’s a big deal, doing the infill.
JN: What types of houses did Ecklund & Swedlund tend to built?
MS: In St. Louis Park it was mostly ramblers—two or three bedroom Ramblers—story-and-a-half expansions, they called them; with the attic space upstairs that could be finished into a bedroom. They were smaller homes. I think they started pricing in the late ‘40s probably in the $9,000 range—house and lot.
JN: How many square feet?MS: 800 to 900 and something. Plus you’d have the future expansion upstairs. Might be another 400 square feet up there. Then you’d have the basement with another 800 or 700 square feet down there to finish.
JN: Attached garage?
MS: Some just carports, some single-car attached. A lot of them one- or two-car detached garages. A lot of detached garages in St. Louis Park. And they’d build and sell a house with no garage, and the homeowners would build a garage later on. I’m sure that happened a lot.
JN: What about the size of garages? Did they change maybe with the later development? Was it customary then at that point to have a two-car garage versus a one-car?
MS: In, like, Cedar Knoll Manor, lot of one-car garages there, still. But more and more you started to see some two-car garages. Now, it’s if you don’t have a three-car garage you’re . . . [Laughter] So this is a slow progression from single-car garages or carports. This house here that they built in Knollwood Plaza Shopping Center [refers to advertising brochure] just had a carport. And then everything became two car-garages probably somewhere in the ‘50s, when they went out to Minnetonka, especially.
JN: Do you remember hearing anything about the fact that there were Jewish families buying these homes?
MS: I didn’t know a thing when I was four or nine years old. No; I didn’t have a clue. I wish my dad was here now so I could ask him. [Laughter]
JN: When did he pass away?
MS: ’98 I think it was. He was 83.
JN: You were describing the relationship between a developer and a builder. And your father’s company did both. At some point does a realtor come into the picture to actually sell the home?
MS: Ecklund & Swedlund had its own sales people who worked just for Ecklund & Swedlund. They sold their own homes—developed lots, built houses, and sold them too. They would also cooperate with the realty people in town. I don’t know when the multiple listings service and the board of realtors came into being, but our homes would get put on a multiple listing service. And we would cooperate and pay fees to outside brokerages to sell our homes.
JN: After you graduated in 1973 you started working for the company. What did you do?MS: Let’s see here. I’ll back up a little bit. In high school and during college I worked on the carpenter crews in the summer time. When I graduated, I think the first thing I started doing was kind of an assistant to the job sup; and then estimating; and then I was doing the closings for a long time, too.
JN: Closings being what?
MS: When the house was done, going to the bank or the title company and transferring title to the owner. That’s mostly what I did up until the time our dad retired. Semi-retired; he never really retired. He worked in the office with us until he passed away.
JN: Does the company exist today?
MS: Yes. Still Ecklund & Swedlund Construction. It’s just my brother and myself. Much smaller than what it was when our dad was going full speed.
JN: What kind of work do you do now? How has it changed?
MS: Homes. Still homes. Changed very little. We just kept doing what he had done. Still developing our own lots when we can, out in—our last projects were out in Rockford and Delano, which we called the “new” [laughs] ring of suburbs—where there is sewer and water out there, too. And the prices are lower, so . . .
JN: Out there were you developing areas? Subdivides—so there are several homes?
MS: Yes. Developing our own developments, you bet; and building the houses.
JN: Which brother by the way?
MS: Jack.
JN: Who were some other developers? You mentioned a couple, but can you think of any other developers who were developing at the same time, again in this early period, late ‘40s, ‘50s, and even into the ‘60s?
MS: Mostly in St. Louis Park?
JN: Yeah.
MS: Adolph Fine was the first name that comes up. For some reason I heard that name growing up, so it just stuck with me. Bruce Construction—Wally Bruce—which is my mother’s brother-in-law. So those are the main two. And the Siegel family. I don’t know all the relations there. But we did buy lots from some Siegels. Julius and Saul Siegel. And I think they had a relative that was a builder too. Saul just passed away about a month ago.JN: Saul having been the son of Julius?
MS: Yes. And the grandson is still in the business developing lots. I don’t know if he is still developing lots, but he was out in Lester Prairie.
JN: Let me mention some developer names and see if any of them sound familiar. Douglas Reese Associates?
MS: Nope.
JN: Thompson Scroggins?
MS: They’re also a real estate company, I think. Yes.
JN: Bill Barbish?
MS: No.
JN: I think I asked you about Dave Trach.
MS: Doesn’t ring a bell. There was also a Sid Rebers. I don’t know if he is still around or not, but he was twenty years ago, fifteen years ago. And his office was in St. Louis Park.
JN: How do you spell that?
MS: Last name, I believe, is R-E-B-E-R-S. His last development that I recall was out in Long Lake—Sugar Woods or something.
JN: But you think he might have also developed in St. Louis Park.
MS: I think so. He had his office for a long time in St. Louis Park: Cedar Lake Road and 100 area—somewhere in there. Not far from the St. Louis Park Rec Center I believe. Just west of the rec center. So anyway, that would be another. I think he did more large custom homes from what I remember. Never met him though.
JN: What’s an example of a recent project that you have worked on? Or maybe one that you’re working on now.
MS: Two projects out in Rockford and Delano. Delano, we’ve developed about 300 single-family lots out there. Houses were 160 to four-and-a-quarter [thousand dollars]. Rockford: a couple hundred single-family lots there. The houses were a little bit lower priced. And also a twin home development in Rockford.
JN: What’s a twin home?MS: Two homes in one. Two homes that are attached together, side by side. It was a townhouse development. Twin home or townhouse.
JN: And you also do remodels. For instance . . .
MS: That’s mostly what we’re doing now, is remodeling, yes. Additions and remodeling.
JN: Including some you’ve done in St. Louis Park?
MS: Yes. Like I mentioned, that’s kind of the most fun part, going back—we have a mailing list of, hopefully, about at least three-quarters of the homes that we’ve built over the sixty-six years. And probably a third of those are in St. Louis Park. We’ve gone back and talked to a few of the original homeowners; gotten calls from them. Sometimes they just want to talk; they don’t want to do [laughs] any remodeling. So yes, we’ve done a few jobs in St. Louis Park.
JN: What’s it like for you to go back, working on a house that you know your father has had a hand in building?
MS: It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun talking especially to the original owners. Our dad had a real good reputation; they built a good house; and that’s the first thing we always hear it seems like: what a solid house that it is. And then when our current carpenters are working on them, they’ll comment too that everything is square and solid. So it’s fun to see that. The company had that reputation—forever.
JN: When you go back to some of these remodels in St. Louis Park, are you aware of some of these original home owners as having been Jewish?
MS: No. It doesn’t enter my mind. Is that good or bad? I don’t know.
JN: We talked a little bit before the interview—the question came up “Why St. Louis Park?” Do you have any thoughts about why so many people following World War II moved to St. Louis Park as opposed to other nearby inner-ring suburbs like Golden Valley?
MS: Not really. I don’t know that they weren’t moving to Golden Valley, too. Draw a circle around downtown Minneapolis, ten miles out or whatever the distance is, and I think it was spreading in every direction. More so some than others, I’m sure; but I don’t know what the reasoning would be other than the usual things: schools, parks, sewer and water. I know why they’re moving out to Delano and Rockford now: because of pricing. Lots are cheaper out there. At least they were anyway. So pricing is a big factor, too.
JN: What are the factors that make a lot cheaper?MS: The original cost of the raw land and then how many lots you can get per acre of raw land.
JN: So size of lots.
MS: Size of lots, you bet. Cost of the infrastructure is pretty similar no matter where you are going to buy and develop. And I don’t know the history of how property originally was developed. Like downtown Minneapolis and maybe St. Louis Park too, blocks were square—fifty-foot lots forever. I don’t know if originally some of the cities actually split up the land that way themselves or if developers came along and did it.
JN: In places like, well wherever you’ve developed, cities stipulate the size of lots?
MS: Yes.
JN: They have to approve a plan that a developer submits?
MS: They have to approve the plan, yes—you bet.
JN: And those plans, by and large have to follow codes that have been set—zoning?
MS: Follow codes and zoning and so forth.
JN: Do you know whether in your dad’s time, or your time, you’ve gone to the cities to ask for zoning changes to allow for, say, smaller lots?
MS: That’s been going on in the last five, six year quite a bit as developers need to get more lots per acre because the cost of land is so high. So it’s taking some special zoning changes sometimes. That evolved into developers proposing the traditional home developments, going back to like it was in Minneapolis originally, and making more of a community thing out of it: front porches; houses that are close to the street; garages that are in the back; maybe with an alley, at least, behind the house so you can’t see the garage. So they are trying to make a whole, cohesive project out of it and in the end get more lots per acre out of it. Think we found, though, the farther west you get people want more lot. They don’t want [laughs] a lot like you’d buy in downtown Minneapolis. So maybe it’s backfired a little bit, I think, in some areas.
JN: Have you found that different cities, as you’ve gone about developing properties in different places, established minimum lot sizes? A range of different lot sizes? For instance as you go further out, are the minimum lot sizes, according to zoning, generally larger? Or can it vary?
MS: It can vary depending on a city. They’re just real hesitant for a long time on packing too many lots into an area. Every city is a little bit different, but very similar in a lot of ways too. And that can change from one year to the next, too. It depends on the planning commission, who is on the city council. It’s a role of the dice for developers; you don’t know what you’re going to get into, for sure.
JN: Going back into St. Louis Park in the earlier days. Did you ever here about existing neighbors having issues with proposed developments in St. Louis Park that your father wanted to do?
MS: Not aware of it, no. I’m sure there were just like there is today. Probably less of an issue back then. There was a housing rush back then, so they were happy to be able to buy a house, I think.
JN: And what about having heard anything about what it was like to work with the city of St. Louis Park?
MS: Just for the fact that they stayed in St. Louis Park for so long and built so many houses, it was a very good city to work with. And again, back at that time, everybody wanted to move forward and build houses and grow the city. Everybody was on the same page, I think.
JN: Do you find yourself in St. Louis Park often these days?
MS: Yes. Driving through. Maybe shopping. I went to the old Wagner’s Drive-In a-week and-a-half ago, which is now called Galaxy Drive In Restaurant, which is right by Division Street where I was born. People of the city would be very aware of it. I was just there a week-and-a-half ago.
JN: How have things changed?
MS: As far as the housing goes, basically not at all. All the houses pretty much look the same. Knollwood Shopping Center is kind of a focal point, so that’s gone through some changes over the years. Residential areas, I think the trees have grown up; but other than that they look very much the same.
JN: And St. Louis Park as a whole—do you have a general sense of how things have changed? More apartment buildings? More commercial?
MS: Not really, I don’t. From the time I left there, grade school years or whatever. I think it was pretty well built up at that time, too. I don’t visualize or know of a lot of changes. Things getting upgraded or improved. Like I said, Knollwood Plaza getting changed over a couple times.
JN: What about the West End?
MS: Which would be what, 169 and . . . ?JN: No, it’s 100 and 394.
MS: All that—oh, 100 and 394; yes, there’s been a lot of activity there. The old Cooper Theater property, there. Yeah. Word of mouth, I’ve heard a lot of good about that development. That’s gone through a lot of changes over the years, too.
JN: Like what?
MS: My earliest memory—I just remember the Cooper Theater being there, and I can’t remember much of anything else around it. Office buildings or whatever, hotels. Then a lot of it got torn down; and now the new shopping area, a couple of the bars and restaurants that are there. . . . I know my dad went to the restaurant there in the ‘90s with a lot of his old buddies; two or three of them still live in the houses that he’d built for them in St. Louis Park. They’d have lunch at the one hotel there every Thursday. So that was always fun—every once in awhile I’d get dragged along.
[BREAK]
JN: You mentioned early in the interview that your family moved away to Excelsior . . .
MS: Yep, Minnetonka.
JN: . . . when you were just a couple years old?
MS: Four years old.
JN: Four years old. But that you moved back?
MS: I got married in ’75. Lived out in the Minnetonka area. That was in the ‘70s. Then we had the last recession housing bubble at the end of the ‘70s. We ended up having to downsize. So I’m looking for a house a little bit cheaper, and the realtor shows me one on Division Street in St. Louis Park. It’s one my dad built, and it was five houses down from where I was born. So it wasn’t a hard decision, I guess, to make at that time. Stan Ecklund ’s sister lived two doors down, still. And there were four or five other original homeowners yet on Division Street. So that was kind of fun.
JN: When you moved into that home did you find the little metal marker inside the kitchen cabinet door that you had mentioned, signifying that . . .
MS: It wasn’t in that house. I don’t recall it being in there, no.
JN: But you have seen these?
MS: I have seen them, yes. I’ve got one at the office right now.
JN: What year did you move to that house?MS: I think it was probably 1979, I’m going to say. And then we live there for twelve years.
JN: And you move where after that?
MS: Here.
JN: To this house. And how did you happen to come to this area?
MS: Talk to my wife about that, I guess. [Laughs] She drew a circle on a map. In the center of the circle was the church that we’ve been going to and taking the kids to, and all the activities. So let’s see if we can find a place that’s within five minutes. This was the first house we looked at and—fell in love with the porch. So, that was it.
JN: What Church is that?
MS: It was called Crystal Free. Now the new name is New Hope Church. County Road 9 and 169.
JN: Is your family still members of the church?
MS: Yep.
JN: You live in Plymouth. Do you know whether there is any relationship between the city of Plymouth and Plymouth Avenue, as it runs through Minneapolis?
MS: I don’t know.
JN: For instance why Plymouth Avenue changed names—if it does at all—and make its way out this way? It’s a wild leap.
MS: I don’t know.
JN: Good. Well, how do you feel about the legacy your father and the company left in St. Louis Park?
MS: I feel very good about it. All of us four kids—proud; feel real good about it. Still hear—people still recognize the name. We’re not as out there now as the company used to be when it was building a lot of houses. But just about everyone recognizes the name yet, so it makes it easier for us to continue on. Yes, there’s a lot of pride that goes—and all the workmen back in those days, they built better houses, too; you always here that, but they did. The guys took a lot of pride in what they did.
JN: Great. Thank you.
MS: Thank you.[BREAK]
MS: [Searches through documents] The only literature I have of the company back from the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s is the sales materials on a model home that Ecklund & Swedlund built in the parking lot of Knollwood Plaza in 1958. They built a home there and then raffled it off, gave it away. They raffled it off on December 23rd I think in 1958—hopefully I’ve got the right year. I’ve still got the newspaper ads.
JN: What was their goal in building this house and raffling it?
MS: Sales promotion. It was the whole thing. This was promoting the transition of building from St. Louis Park to moving out to Minnetonka. They were still building in both cities. This lot was built in St. Louis Park. I think it says somewhere that 75,000 people went through it and filled out the forms. It would’ve sold for 18,700, including a lot, out in Minnetonka. So they moved the house out to Minnetonka when the raffle was over. At that time, the advertising slogan was “Move West.” I remember billboards with the covered wagon and “Ecklund & Swedlund Move West” or something on there. So that’s all the newspaper stuff. Here’s a larger one: that’s my dad and Stan here, but here’s all the subcontractors and Knollwood Plaza—probably some Knollwood Plaza stores in there, too; I’m not sure. Homedale Nursery is there; I know they were right across the road from Knollwood Plaza. All the contractors had participated in building the house.
JN: And had Knollwood Plaza Shopping Center been built at that point?
MS: Yep. So, they built the house—and I didn’t realize this till just the other day: after they showed the house for a while, they remodeled it and made it into a contemporary interior. I guess it was the decorator’s idea. And a gal from Power’s department store, which was in Knollwood Plaza, did all the decorating for the project. I think this was the original one, and just before they raffled it all off, they did another ad for the contemporary. Here’s two little booklets for the Knollwood Plaza. This stuff came into our possession about ten years ago when some guy that had something to do with working with Knollwood Plaza Shopping Center in the marketing department or something—maybe he was the people that developed it—stopped by our office and gave us this stuff. He had kept it all these years and thought we might like to have it.
JN: Had you known about this before?
MS: I remember the house when I was eight years old, when it was being built; and I remember going through it. That was the only time the company did it. I’m sure it was a lot of work, and, I think, like the ad says, it’s the biggest give-away ever in Minnesota. That was the sales ad anyway.JN: What other kinds of things would the company do in the way of promotion?
MS: Just normal advertising. I think, other than that, I don’t know if there were other promotions, particularly. Just normal advertising; real estate advertising for the lots and the homes.
JN: You mentioned billboards?
MS: Billboards, yes. The billboards with the “Move West” for the Minnetonka developments. The biggest billboard he ever did was the back of the 7-Hi Shopping Center in Minnetonka—the drive-in theater, the back of the whole screen, which faced the intersection. He had the whole back of the screen painted into a billboard for Ecklund & Swedlund. It wasn’t a week later that the city called him up and said, [laughs] “That’s against city code; it’s way too big.” So he had to take it down. So that was probably the biggest billboard ever in Minnesota, I suppose. I don’t know.
JN: When was that—any idea?
MS: That was early ‘60s. Early, mid-‘60s.
JN: Any other kinds of advertising—radio, television, newspapers?
MS: Not that I recall, no. I’m sure he tried it off and on. Not TV back then, because maybe TV wasn’t such a big deal at that time. I think he just found in the end—and it’s still true today, I think, besides the Internet, didn’t have the Internet back then—newspaper ads and signs, signage, on-site signage is the best. And the MLS realtor’s service.
That’s another handout that he had. It shows Stan and my dad, and here’s three sales people. Does that say Jack Clapp?
JN: Yes.
MS: He was a job sup. Parker Reed—there’s a street named after him in Cedar Knoll Manor, or the Kilmer Addition, in St. Louis Park. He worked for my dad up until the ‘80s. He retired. Parker Reed and Don Wong both did.
JN: Great. Anything else?
MS: [Searches through documents] No. I don’t think so. Hang on, I shouldn’t say no. I’m just going to leave you with this stuff; you can take it with you. This is on our website, which is down right now. “Builder Story.” So we talk about our dad here; World War II; B-17 pilot and all that; and then coming home and starting with Stan. We have the ad for the model home in Knollwood Plaza. Then the first company car—it was a 1939 Cadillac, [laughs] or something like that.JN: Did this actually have this writing on the side of the car?
MS: No. That was added. That’s our grandma. As I’m looking through, this is something else—promotion wise—we were talking about. He was a big sponsor of Babe Ruth Baseball, I think both in St. Louis Park and Minnetonka. Here he is getting an award from Lawrence Welk for his sponsorship of Babe Ruth.
JN: In 1958?
MS: I think that’s when that was; yes, 1958. We’re using this as the first home built in St. Louis Park. I don’t know that it is. But that’s typical of story-and-a-half houses in St. Louis Park.
JN: Do you know where this house is?
MS: No, this is just something that we’ve had. It may be just a marketing photograph that someone pulled off somewhere. But it’s a perfect example of what was going on in St. Louis Park. A young—here’s a veteran with a wife and a couple kids already.
JN: In 1946?
MS: Yeah. There’s an old newspaper ad that I found for houses that were selling in St. Louis Park—12,000 to 17,000. That’s a current . . . that’s today; that was last year, actually. This was a trade show booth that we have. Same name, same company.
JN: And where was this photograph taken?
MS: That was probably down at the Convention Center in Minneapolis.
JN: For what convention?
MS: Home and Garden Show or something like that. One of those homes; they have several of them. I kind of lose track of which one it was. One of the Home and garden shows.
JN: How often do you participate?
MS: We did about four in the last year; we haven’t done any yet this year. Last year was the first time we tried it out. We had people walk by and, “Oh, I know you guys.” Couple times it’s an old homeowner. Two times it was people that worked for my dad. I don’t think we got any jobs out of it. [Laughs] A lot of conversation. So I think that’s pretty much it.
JN: Great, thank you again.
MS: Yeah.[END]

Interview with Mark Swedlund
In his home at 10715-34th Ave., Plymouth, Minn.
Interviewed by Jeff Norman
Date of Interview: June 26, 2012
Mark Swedlund: MS
Jeff Norman: JN
JN: This is Jeff Norman talking with Mark Swedlund in his home in Plymouth, Minnesota, on June 26th, 2012. Mark, first of all, a little background information. What year were you born?
MS: 1950.
JN: And where?
MS: St. Louis Park.
JN: What was the address of your family home in the Park.
MS: Boy oh boy. Seventy-something Division Street.
JN: What part of St. Louis Park was that?
MS: Texas Avenue and Highway 7, right across from Knollwood Plaza. I lived there from 1950 to ’54. Then I moved back there—five houses down the street in about 1979.
JN: Where did the family move in 1954?
MS: 1954 we moved out to Excelsior on Christmas Lake.
JN: Why did the family move, do you know?
MS: Too many people for a little house. The company was not old, but they were doing real well and moving up, I guess, and then started building houses—went from St. Louis Park out to Minnetonka, too. So it was a natural move for our home, too.
JN: Did you attend college?
MS: Yep.
JN: Where?MS: St. Cloud State.
JN: And what did you study?
MS: I got a general business degree.
JN: What did you do after you graduated?
MS: Went to work for Dad.
JN: And that was what year?
MS: 1973.
JN: Did you marry?
MS: Yes.
JN: When?
MS: 1975.
JN: And your wife’s name?
MS: Valerie.
JN: Any children?
MS: Four.
JN: Their ages?
MS: Thirty-three, twenty-nine, twenty-three, and twenty-one.
JN: Have you ever lived outside of the area?
MS: No.
JN: Turning to the history of Ecklund and Swedlund, what’s the earliest history of the company? How did it form; how did you father become involved?
MS: Like we talked about, after he got out of the service in 1944, he came home and—my mother’s brother-in-law was a builder, building homes in St. Louis Park as Bruce Construction. My dad went to work for him.
JN: What was his name?
MS: Wally Bruce.JN: And you father did what in the beginning?
MS: I’m not really sure what—the laboring construction, supervision kind of thing. I think it was only for about a year, and my father got together with one of his best friends from high school, Stan Ecklund, and they started Ecklund & Swedlund Construction. They made some kind of arrangements with somebody to buy a few lots, I know on Division Street where we lived, but also over on Colorado Avenue. I think that’s where the first houses were. We lived over there before I was born, on Colorado.
JN: And what?
MS: That’s on the east side of 100 and north of Minnetonka Boulevard. Bunny’s restaurant is over there. So it’s north behind Bunny’s, east of Methodist Hospital. But anyway, I think lots were like $500 back then or even less to buy a lot in St. Louis Park, so they started building houses. Within a couple years they were building a lot of houses.
JN: Going back to Wally Bruce, what were some houses that he built or some areas in which he built?
MS: I think you’ll find a lot of his homes around the Minneapolis Country Club, whatever those developments’ names are—I’m not sure. That’s where the Westwood Nature Center is, too. Minneapolis Country Club is—southeast corner of 394 and 169.
JN: As far as you know Wally Bruce was building prior to, up to, and beyond 1944?
MS: Yes, oh yeah. The Bruce family was building all through the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Then Wally’s two sons took over. Wally retired. They were building up until maybe even the ‘90s. Steve Bruce—I think he still lives in Edina. They also lived on Christmas Lake, across the lake from us, for twenty some years.
JN: Did your father and Wally Bruce remain friends even though they became competitors?
MS: That’s a good question. As far as I know, but we didn’t do a lot of family things together. I guess maybe because we live so close across the lake from each other. You could almost wave across the lake.
JN: The new company forms, starting to buy properties, and then how did that evolve?
MS: Buying lots from whoever was developing lots in St. Louis Park. [Refers to a map] I tried to highlight areas where they built, as best I know. Up and down Cedar Avenue, there’s quite a few homes that they built there.
JN: Cedar Lake Road?MS: Cedar Lake Road, I mean, yes. And they developed some of those lots themselves, because I know one of the streets is called Stanlen Road. Stan Ecklund and Len Swedlund.
JN: What’s the difference between a developer and a builder?
MS: Developer just buys land, puts in the streets, sewer, and water and then sells the lots maybe to a builder. In Ecklund & Swedlund, my dad’s case, he developed the lots—developer—and he was also the builder. So they went all the way through building houses, too. And I think in the St. Louis Park Historical Society’s website, the first biggest development that they did was the Kilmer Addition, which is also called Cedar Knoll. And that’s on the website. They annexed that—this is probably, now what year? ’56 or something like that—’54. They annexed that property from the city—from the township of Minnetonka, because Minnetonka didn’t have sewer and water.
JN: So they convinced the city of St. Louis Park to annex that.
MS: I think that’s what it says on the website too. So they annexed it in and got sewer and water and whatever. I think there’s a couple hundred houses in there that they built. Developed the lots and built them. It wasn’t long after that they probably ran out of lots in St. Louis Park, for the most part; so they moved west to Minnetonka, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie.
JN: So these earlier areas that you’ve highlighted on this map, like, for instance, the first one you mentioned, the earlier one, off of Excelsior Boulevard . . .
MS: Yeah, the lower right corner there.
JN: There’s another area that’s near Knollwood—just north of Knollwood. When would that have been developed?
MS: That was, let’s see here. Being that I was young at the time—actually, my sister moved there in 1959, so they were building houses in that area in 1959 yet.
JN: And the area on both the north and south side of Cedar Lake Road—when would that have been developed?
MS: Same time period, I think.
JN: It sounds like the company really grew in the 1950s?
MS: Yes, it grew really fast. They were really go-getters, I guess would be the term. A lot of veterans coming back, and so forth.
JN: Do you know how many homes they built?MS: I was trying to guess. In St. Louis Park I would guess between four and six hundred. I’d have to sit down with plat maps to get it closer.
JN: You mention vets coming back. What’s you sense of the housing need in the late ‘40s and ‘50s when your father joined the partnership and they’re building homes?
MS: It was a housing boom. All the veterans coming back, getting married, having kids. Beginning of the baby boomers, I guess, generation. I think the VA financing—the government—became a program. Zero down or whatever it is; minimum down payment. All the vets were buying houses. Build them as fast as you can, and they would sell as fast as they can.
JN: Do you have any sense of where these young vets with families—young families probably, often—were coming from?
MS: I never knew. No. I was too young. I didn’t care at the time, because I was too young. Where specifically to St. Louis Park, no; I never had any knowledge of why people were moving into St. Louis Park or where they were coming from.
JN: Did the company ever develop other kinds of housing, like apartment buildings?
MS: It was always single-family homes. That’s all they wanted to do; they didn’t want to do apartments or commercial.
JN: Do you know why?
MS: No. They’re totally different businesses. But I think he was so busy building houses. They were doing a hundred and some houses a year. A lot of them custom houses, so that’s a full time job. Both him and Stan were very hands-on. It was eighteen-hour days, I’m pretty sure. Long days just building houses.
JN: You mentioned that what developers do is put in infrastructure. But then there is surrounding infrastructure, like highways and schools. Do you have any sense of what the relationship was between—I know this is before your time, but maybe there were stories told—where they chose to build, the attractiveness of those areas in relation to other, bigger supporting infrastructure.
MS: Yes, and that probably hasn’t changed over the years. Close to schools; having city utilities—sewer and water—available; and being able to subdivide city lots and have services available to own them; parks close by; and close to the big city too. St. Louis Park had all of those. The new suburbs after that became Minnetonka, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie.
JN: And when did they develop?MS: Starting in the ‘50s.
JN: So around the same time, then.
MS: Yes. St. Louis Park probably in the ‘40s and ‘50s; then Minnetonka in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and so forth. Now Minnetonka is built up; Plymouth is built up. Now they’re going further west again. Access to schools is always a big thing.
JN: What about as families—many families in society—become more affluent, how do homes themselves change as they’ve gone further out? Are they larger, for instance?
MS: Everything just kept on getting bigger and bigger. Lots got bigger. St. Louis Park—what are they, 50-foot-wide lots? Small lots. Next move was out to Minnetonka, and the lots became 90, 110 feet wide and a third to three-quarter-acre lots, with sewer and water available. Now it’s going in the other direction, because land is so short and costly, lots are becoming smaller again.
JN: Where?
MS: In the areas that are being developed now. The new suburbs—Minnetonka and farther west. Even out in the country you’ll find that they are trying to do the old traditional neighborhoods. Watertown has a development. Small lots, alleys. Trying to do the old-style, in-town residential developments. It all depends on the price of land, I guess, in the end.
JN: Has that also pushed more development toward condos or apartment complexes?
MS: Costs have I’m sure, yes. Townhouses especially. Cost is a big factor.
JN: Has there been, to you knowledge, infill development in St. Louis Park? Or maybe tear down and rebuild?
MS: I know of a little bit; I’ve never researched it, but every city—inner ring suburbs—are seeing a lot of that. Every once in awhile you’ll find a house that’s got a couple of acres in St. Louis Park or Golden Valley or something, so a builder will buy it and maybe there will be four houses going up later on. That’s a big deal, doing the infill.
JN: What types of houses did Ecklund & Swedlund tend to built?
MS: In St. Louis Park it was mostly ramblers—two or three bedroom Ramblers—story-and-a-half expansions, they called them; with the attic space upstairs that could be finished into a bedroom. They were smaller homes. I think they started pricing in the late ‘40s probably in the $9,000 range—house and lot.
JN: How many square feet?MS: 800 to 900 and something. Plus you’d have the future expansion upstairs. Might be another 400 square feet up there. Then you’d have the basement with another 800 or 700 square feet down there to finish.
JN: Attached garage?
MS: Some just carports, some single-car attached. A lot of them one- or two-car detached garages. A lot of detached garages in St. Louis Park. And they’d build and sell a house with no garage, and the homeowners would build a garage later on. I’m sure that happened a lot.
JN: What about the size of garages? Did they change maybe with the later development? Was it customary then at that point to have a two-car garage versus a one-car?
MS: In, like, Cedar Knoll Manor, lot of one-car garages there, still. But more and more you started to see some two-car garages. Now, it’s if you don’t have a three-car garage you’re . . . [Laughter] So this is a slow progression from single-car garages or carports. This house here that they built in Knollwood Plaza Shopping Center [refers to advertising brochure] just had a carport. And then everything became two car-garages probably somewhere in the ‘50s, when they went out to Minnetonka, especially.
JN: Do you remember hearing anything about the fact that there were Jewish families buying these homes?
MS: I didn’t know a thing when I was four or nine years old. No; I didn’t have a clue. I wish my dad was here now so I could ask him. [Laughter]
JN: When did he pass away?
MS: ’98 I think it was. He was 83.
JN: You were describing the relationship between a developer and a builder. And your father’s company did both. At some point does a realtor come into the picture to actually sell the home?
MS: Ecklund & Swedlund had its own sales people who worked just for Ecklund & Swedlund. They sold their own homes—developed lots, built houses, and sold them too. They would also cooperate with the realty people in town. I don’t know when the multiple listings service and the board of realtors came into being, but our homes would get put on a multiple listing service. And we would cooperate and pay fees to outside brokerages to sell our homes.
JN: After you graduated in 1973 you started working for the company. What did you do?MS: Let’s see here. I’ll back up a little bit. In high school and during college I worked on the carpenter crews in the summer time. When I graduated, I think the first thing I started doing was kind of an assistant to the job sup; and then estimating; and then I was doing the closings for a long time, too.
JN: Closings being what?
MS: When the house was done, going to the bank or the title company and transferring title to the owner. That’s mostly what I did up until the time our dad retired. Semi-retired; he never really retired. He worked in the office with us until he passed away.
JN: Does the company exist today?
MS: Yes. Still Ecklund & Swedlund Construction. It’s just my brother and myself. Much smaller than what it was when our dad was going full speed.
JN: What kind of work do you do now? How has it changed?
MS: Homes. Still homes. Changed very little. We just kept doing what he had done. Still developing our own lots when we can, out in—our last projects were out in Rockford and Delano, which we called the “new” [laughs] ring of suburbs—where there is sewer and water out there, too. And the prices are lower, so . . .
JN: Out there were you developing areas? Subdivides—so there are several homes?
MS: Yes. Developing our own developments, you bet; and building the houses.
JN: Which brother by the way?
MS: Jack.
JN: Who were some other developers? You mentioned a couple, but can you think of any other developers who were developing at the same time, again in this early period, late ‘40s, ‘50s, and even into the ‘60s?
MS: Mostly in St. Louis Park?
JN: Yeah.
MS: Adolph Fine was the first name that comes up. For some reason I heard that name growing up, so it just stuck with me. Bruce Construction—Wally Bruce—which is my mother’s brother-in-law. So those are the main two. And the Siegel family. I don’t know all the relations there. But we did buy lots from some Siegels. Julius and Saul Siegel. And I think they had a relative that was a builder too. Saul just passed away about a month ago.JN: Saul having been the son of Julius?
MS: Yes. And the grandson is still in the business developing lots. I don’t know if he is still developing lots, but he was out in Lester Prairie.
JN: Let me mention some developer names and see if any of them sound familiar. Douglas Reese Associates?
MS: Nope.
JN: Thompson Scroggins?
MS: They’re also a real estate company, I think. Yes.
JN: Bill Barbish?
MS: No.
JN: I think I asked you about Dave Trach.
MS: Doesn’t ring a bell. There was also a Sid Rebers. I don’t know if he is still around or not, but he was twenty years ago, fifteen years ago. And his office was in St. Louis Park.
JN: How do you spell that?
MS: Last name, I believe, is R-E-B-E-R-S. His last development that I recall was out in Long Lake—Sugar Woods or something.
JN: But you think he might have also developed in St. Louis Park.
MS: I think so. He had his office for a long time in St. Louis Park: Cedar Lake Road and 100 area—somewhere in there. Not far from the St. Louis Park Rec Center I believe. Just west of the rec center. So anyway, that would be another. I think he did more large custom homes from what I remember. Never met him though.
JN: What’s an example of a recent project that you have worked on? Or maybe one that you’re working on now.
MS: Two projects out in Rockford and Delano. Delano, we’ve developed about 300 single-family lots out there. Houses were 160 to four-and-a-quarter [thousand dollars]. Rockford: a couple hundred single-family lots there. The houses were a little bit lower priced. And also a twin home development in Rockford.
JN: What’s a twin home?MS: Two homes in one. Two homes that are attached together, side by side. It was a townhouse development. Twin home or townhouse.
JN: And you also do remodels. For instance . . .
MS: That’s mostly what we’re doing now, is remodeling, yes. Additions and remodeling.
JN: Including some you’ve done in St. Louis Park?
MS: Yes. Like I mentioned, that’s kind of the most fun part, going back—we have a mailing list of, hopefully, about at least three-quarters of the homes that we’ve built over the sixty-six years. And probably a third of those are in St. Louis Park. We’ve gone back and talked to a few of the original homeowners; gotten calls from them. Sometimes they just want to talk; they don’t want to do [laughs] any remodeling. So yes, we’ve done a few jobs in St. Louis Park.
JN: What’s it like for you to go back, working on a house that you know your father has had a hand in building?
MS: It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun talking especially to the original owners. Our dad had a real good reputation; they built a good house; and that’s the first thing we always hear it seems like: what a solid house that it is. And then when our current carpenters are working on them, they’ll comment too that everything is square and solid. So it’s fun to see that. The company had that reputation—forever.
JN: When you go back to some of these remodels in St. Louis Park, are you aware of some of these original home owners as having been Jewish?
MS: No. It doesn’t enter my mind. Is that good or bad? I don’t know.
JN: We talked a little bit before the interview—the question came up “Why St. Louis Park?” Do you have any thoughts about why so many people following World War II moved to St. Louis Park as opposed to other nearby inner-ring suburbs like Golden Valley?
MS: Not really. I don’t know that they weren’t moving to Golden Valley, too. Draw a circle around downtown Minneapolis, ten miles out or whatever the distance is, and I think it was spreading in every direction. More so some than others, I’m sure; but I don’t know what the reasoning would be other than the usual things: schools, parks, sewer and water. I know why they’re moving out to Delano and Rockford now: because of pricing. Lots are cheaper out there. At least they were anyway. So pricing is a big factor, too.
JN: What are the factors that make a lot cheaper?MS: The original cost of the raw land and then how many lots you can get per acre of raw land.
JN: So size of lots.
MS: Size of lots, you bet. Cost of the infrastructure is pretty similar no matter where you are going to buy and develop. And I don’t know the history of how property originally was developed. Like downtown Minneapolis and maybe St. Louis Park too, blocks were square—fifty-foot lots forever. I don’t know if originally some of the cities actually split up the land that way themselves or if developers came along and did it.
JN: In places like, well wherever you’ve developed, cities stipulate the size of lots?
MS: Yes.
JN: They have to approve a plan that a developer submits?
MS: They have to approve the plan, yes—you bet.
JN: And those plans, by and large have to follow codes that have been set—zoning?
MS: Follow codes and zoning and so forth.
JN: Do you know whether in your dad’s time, or your time, you’ve gone to the cities to ask for zoning changes to allow for, say, smaller lots?
MS: That’s been going on in the last five, six year quite a bit as developers need to get more lots per acre because the cost of land is so high. So it’s taking some special zoning changes sometimes. That evolved into developers proposing the traditional home developments, going back to like it was in Minneapolis originally, and making more of a community thing out of it: front porches; houses that are close to the street; garages that are in the back; maybe with an alley, at least, behind the house so you can’t see the garage. So they are trying to make a whole, cohesive project out of it and in the end get more lots per acre out of it. Think we found, though, the farther west you get people want more lot. They don’t want [laughs] a lot like you’d buy in downtown Minneapolis. So maybe it’s backfired a little bit, I think, in some areas.
JN: Have you found that different cities, as you’ve gone about developing properties in different places, established minimum lot sizes? A range of different lot sizes? For instance as you go further out, are the minimum lot sizes, according to zoning, generally larger? Or can it vary?
MS: It can vary depending on a city. They’re just real hesitant for a long time on packing too many lots into an area. Every city is a little bit different, but very similar in a lot of ways too. And that can change from one year to the next, too. It depends on the planning commission, who is on the city council. It’s a role of the dice for developers; you don’t know what you’re going to get into, for sure.
JN: Going back into St. Louis Park in the earlier days. Did you ever here about existing neighbors having issues with proposed developments in St. Louis Park that your father wanted to do?
MS: Not aware of it, no. I’m sure there were just like there is today. Probably less of an issue back then. There was a housing rush back then, so they were happy to be able to buy a house, I think.
JN: And what about having heard anything about what it was like to work with the city of St. Louis Park?
MS: Just for the fact that they stayed in St. Louis Park for so long and built so many houses, it was a very good city to work with. And again, back at that time, everybody wanted to move forward and build houses and grow the city. Everybody was on the same page, I think.
JN: Do you find yourself in St. Louis Park often these days?
MS: Yes. Driving through. Maybe shopping. I went to the old Wagner’s Drive-In a-week and-a-half ago, which is now called Galaxy Drive In Restaurant, which is right by Division Street where I was born. People of the city would be very aware of it. I was just there a week-and-a-half ago.
JN: How have things changed?
MS: As far as the housing goes, basically not at all. All the houses pretty much look the same. Knollwood Shopping Center is kind of a focal point, so that’s gone through some changes over the years. Residential areas, I think the trees have grown up; but other than that they look very much the same.
JN: And St. Louis Park as a whole—do you have a general sense of how things have changed? More apartment buildings? More commercial?
MS: Not really, I don’t. From the time I left there, grade school years or whatever. I think it was pretty well built up at that time, too. I don’t visualize or know of a lot of changes. Things getting upgraded or improved. Like I said, Knollwood Plaza getting changed over a couple times.
JN: What about the West End?
MS: Which would be what, 169 and . . . ?JN: No, it’s 100 and 394.
MS: All that—oh, 100 and 394; yes, there’s been a lot of activity there. The old Cooper Theater property, there. Yeah. Word of mouth, I’ve heard a lot of good about that development. That’s gone through a lot of changes over the years, too.
JN: Like what?
MS: My earliest memory—I just remember the Cooper Theater being there, and I can’t remember much of anything else around it. Office buildings or whatever, hotels. Then a lot of it got torn down; and now the new shopping area, a couple of the bars and restaurants that are there. . . . I know my dad went to the restaurant there in the ‘90s with a lot of his old buddies; two or three of them still live in the houses that he’d built for them in St. Louis Park. They’d have lunch at the one hotel there every Thursday. So that was always fun—every once in awhile I’d get dragged along.
[BREAK]
JN: You mentioned early in the interview that your family moved away to Excelsior . . .
MS: Yep, Minnetonka.
JN: . . . when you were just a couple years old?
MS: Four years old.
JN: Four years old. But that you moved back?
MS: I got married in ’75. Lived out in the Minnetonka area. That was in the ‘70s. Then we had the last recession housing bubble at the end of the ‘70s. We ended up having to downsize. So I’m looking for a house a little bit cheaper, and the realtor shows me one on Division Street in St. Louis Park. It’s one my dad built, and it was five houses down from where I was born. So it wasn’t a hard decision, I guess, to make at that time. Stan Ecklund ’s sister lived two doors down, still. And there were four or five other original homeowners yet on Division Street. So that was kind of fun.
JN: When you moved into that home did you find the little metal marker inside the kitchen cabinet door that you had mentioned, signifying that . . .
MS: It wasn’t in that house. I don’t recall it being in there, no.
JN: But you have seen these?
MS: I have seen them, yes. I’ve got one at the office right now.
JN: What year did you move to that house?MS: I think it was probably 1979, I’m going to say. And then we live there for twelve years.
JN: And you move where after that?
MS: Here.
JN: To this house. And how did you happen to come to this area?
MS: Talk to my wife about that, I guess. [Laughs] She drew a circle on a map. In the center of the circle was the church that we’ve been going to and taking the kids to, and all the activities. So let’s see if we can find a place that’s within five minutes. This was the first house we looked at and—fell in love with the porch. So, that was it.
JN: What Church is that?
MS: It was called Crystal Free. Now the new name is New Hope Church. County Road 9 and 169.
JN: Is your family still members of the church?
MS: Yep.
JN: You live in Plymouth. Do you know whether there is any relationship between the city of Plymouth and Plymouth Avenue, as it runs through Minneapolis?
MS: I don’t know.
JN: For instance why Plymouth Avenue changed names—if it does at all—and make its way out this way? It’s a wild leap.
MS: I don’t know.
JN: Good. Well, how do you feel about the legacy your father and the company left in St. Louis Park?
MS: I feel very good about it. All of us four kids—proud; feel real good about it. Still hear—people still recognize the name. We’re not as out there now as the company used to be when it was building a lot of houses. But just about everyone recognizes the name yet, so it makes it easier for us to continue on. Yes, there’s a lot of pride that goes—and all the workmen back in those days, they built better houses, too; you always here that, but they did. The guys took a lot of pride in what they did.
JN: Great. Thank you.
MS: Thank you.[BREAK]
MS: [Searches through documents] The only literature I have of the company back from the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s is the sales materials on a model home that Ecklund & Swedlund built in the parking lot of Knollwood Plaza in 1958. They built a home there and then raffled it off, gave it away. They raffled it off on December 23rd I think in 1958—hopefully I’ve got the right year. I’ve still got the newspaper ads.
JN: What was their goal in building this house and raffling it?
MS: Sales promotion. It was the whole thing. This was promoting the transition of building from St. Louis Park to moving out to Minnetonka. They were still building in both cities. This lot was built in St. Louis Park. I think it says somewhere that 75,000 people went through it and filled out the forms. It would’ve sold for 18,700, including a lot, out in Minnetonka. So they moved the house out to Minnetonka when the raffle was over. At that time, the advertising slogan was “Move West.” I remember billboards with the covered wagon and “Ecklund & Swedlund Move West” or something on there. So that’s all the newspaper stuff. Here’s a larger one: that’s my dad and Stan here, but here’s all the subcontractors and Knollwood Plaza—probably some Knollwood Plaza stores in there, too; I’m not sure. Homedale Nursery is there; I know they were right across the road from Knollwood Plaza. All the contractors had participated in building the house.
JN: And had Knollwood Plaza Shopping Center been built at that point?
MS: Yep. So, they built the house—and I didn’t realize this till just the other day: after they showed the house for a while, they remodeled it and made it into a contemporary interior. I guess it was the decorator’s idea. And a gal from Power’s department store, which was in Knollwood Plaza, did all the decorating for the project. I think this was the original one, and just before they raffled it all off, they did another ad for the contemporary. Here’s two little booklets for the Knollwood Plaza. This stuff came into our possession about ten years ago when some guy that had something to do with working with Knollwood Plaza Shopping Center in the marketing department or something—maybe he was the people that developed it—stopped by our office and gave us this stuff. He had kept it all these years and thought we might like to have it.
JN: Had you known about this before?
MS: I remember the house when I was eight years old, when it was being built; and I remember going through it. That was the only time the company did it. I’m sure it was a lot of work, and, I think, like the ad says, it’s the biggest give-away ever in Minnesota. That was the sales ad anyway.JN: What other kinds of things would the company do in the way of promotion?
MS: Just normal advertising. I think, other than that, I don’t know if there were other promotions, particularly. Just normal advertising; real estate advertising for the lots and the homes.
JN: You mentioned billboards?
MS: Billboards, yes. The billboards with the “Move West” for the Minnetonka developments. The biggest billboard he ever did was the back of the 7-Hi Shopping Center in Minnetonka—the drive-in theater, the back of the whole screen, which faced the intersection. He had the whole back of the screen painted into a billboard for Ecklund & Swedlund. It wasn’t a week later that the city called him up and said, [laughs] “That’s against city code; it’s way too big.” So he had to take it down. So that was probably the biggest billboard ever in Minnesota, I suppose. I don’t know.
JN: When was that—any idea?
MS: That was early ‘60s. Early, mid-‘60s.
JN: Any other kinds of advertising—radio, television, newspapers?
MS: Not that I recall, no. I’m sure he tried it off and on. Not TV back then, because maybe TV wasn’t such a big deal at that time. I think he just found in the end—and it’s still true today, I think, besides the Internet, didn’t have the Internet back then—newspaper ads and signs, signage, on-site signage is the best. And the MLS realtor’s service.
That’s another handout that he had. It shows Stan and my dad, and here’s three sales people. Does that say Jack Clapp?
JN: Yes.
MS: He was a job sup. Parker Reed—there’s a street named after him in Cedar Knoll Manor, or the Kilmer Addition, in St. Louis Park. He worked for my dad up until the ‘80s. He retired. Parker Reed and Don Wong both did.
JN: Great. Anything else?
MS: [Searches through documents] No. I don’t think so. Hang on, I shouldn’t say no. I’m just going to leave you with this stuff; you can take it with you. This is on our website, which is down right now. “Builder Story.” So we talk about our dad here; World War II; B-17 pilot and all that; and then coming home and starting with Stan. We have the ad for the model home in Knollwood Plaza. Then the first company car—it was a 1939 Cadillac, [laughs] or something like that.JN: Did this actually have this writing on the side of the car?
MS: No. That was added. That’s our grandma. As I’m looking through, this is something else—promotion wise—we were talking about. He was a big sponsor of Babe Ruth Baseball, I think both in St. Louis Park and Minnetonka. Here he is getting an award from Lawrence Welk for his sponsorship of Babe Ruth.
JN: In 1958?
MS: I think that’s when that was; yes, 1958. We’re using this as the first home built in St. Louis Park. I don’t know that it is. But that’s typical of story-and-a-half houses in St. Louis Park.
JN: Do you know where this house is?
MS: No, this is just something that we’ve had. It may be just a marketing photograph that someone pulled off somewhere. But it’s a perfect example of what was going on in St. Louis Park. A young—here’s a veteran with a wife and a couple kids already.
JN: In 1946?
MS: Yeah. There’s an old newspaper ad that I found for houses that were selling in St. Louis Park—12,000 to 17,000. That’s a current . . . that’s today; that was last year, actually. This was a trade show booth that we have. Same name, same company.
JN: And where was this photograph taken?
MS: That was probably down at the Convention Center in Minneapolis.
JN: For what convention?
MS: Home and Garden Show or something like that. One of those homes; they have several of them. I kind of lose track of which one it was. One of the Home and garden shows.
JN: How often do you participate?
MS: We did about four in the last year; we haven’t done any yet this year. Last year was the first time we tried it out. We had people walk by and, “Oh, I know you guys.” Couple times it’s an old homeowner. Two times it was people that worked for my dad. I don’t think we got any jobs out of it. [Laughs] A lot of conversation. So I think that’s pretty much it.
JN: Great, thank you again.
MS: Yeah.[END]